On or about June 2, 2014, the US Trade Representative (USTR) posted on its website a document entitled, Trans-Pacific Partnership: Summary of U.S. Objectives which describes the Administration’s goals and objectives for TPP, and presents the main elements of each chapter from the United States’ perspective. The document states in part:
The Obama Administration is pursuing TPP to unlock opportunities for American manufacturers, workers, service providers, farmers, and ranchers – to support job creation and wage growth. We are working hard to ensure that TPP will be a comprehensive deal, providing new and meaningful market access for goods and services; strong and enforceable labor standards and environmental commitments; groundbreaking new rules designed to ensure fair competition between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies; commitments that will improve the transparency and consistency of the regulatory environment to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to operate across the region; a robust intellectual property (IP) rights framework to promote innovation, while supporting access to innovative and generic medicines and an open Internet; and obligations that will promote a thriving digital economy, including new rules to ensure the free flow of data.
This document describes the Administration’s goals and objectives for TPP, and presents the main elements of each chapter from the United States’ perspective. Negotiations toward a TPP Agreement are ongoing, and many of the elements detailed below are not settled. These are our objectives; there is still work to be done to achieve them. This document lays out the Administration’s vision, which the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is advancing, of harnessing trade as a tool for economic growth and supporting jobs, and building opportunity for Americans in the context of an agreement that will benefit all TPP countries.
We are committed to providing the public information on what we are working to achieve through trade negotiations, and we will continue to share this information through the press, social media, and at www.ustr.gov as we move forward in the TPP negotiations.
The document then lists the main US objectives for each of the following chapters:
• Trade in Goods
• Textiles
• Services
• Investment
• Labor
• Environment
• E-Commerce and Telecommunications
• Competition Policy and State-Owned Enterprises
• Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Technical Barriers to Trade and Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
• Transparency, Anticorruption and Regulatory Coherence
• Customs, Trade Facilitation and Rules of Origin
• Government Procurement
• Development and Trade Capacity-Building
• Dispute Settlement
• U.S.-Japan Bilateral Negotiations on Motor Vehicle Trade and Non-Tariff Measures
